Rogue utility

I've always been a fan of scouts that do a little more than just DPS. I personally would like to see maybe a garotte or throat slice abilty that would silence casters (only useable from behind). A mitigation debuff would be clutch. What would you guys like to see, a rogue expanded with some utilty style abilties, or the classic dps class where the only real utility is for corpse runs and making stuff dead?

Use of blackjack from behind to stun or otherwise temporarily render a mob unconscious/mezzed.

More trap disarms.

More lock picking.

More general sneaking to open doors, press levers or other dungeon mechanisms.

Sneaking should be tied to the brightness of the area. Sneak at night outdoors or in a dark dank dungeon - easy. Sneak in broad daylight in an open field, nearly impossible unless augmented by a caster's invis or some other item.

Well we already have a mez with smoke and mirrors, but I actually like the blackjack idea better, its much more limited and we would step on chanters toes less if our cc was from behind or stealth only.

As for more traps and pick locks. I'd love to see a lot of that stuff.

Your stealth idea is cool especially if you add the distract ability from wow. I have to give credit where credit is due wow had some awesome class abilities.

I would like to see darts (poison, sleep), stealth, flash powder for disruption (confound for few seconds), alchemy concoctions, poisons (poison crafting), blackjack (mez/stun), lock picking & traps, evac. So basically similar to what we had in VG!

I'm in the camp of more out of combat utility. Opening locks, disarming traps, that sort of thing. Also would like something to maybe give them a little something extra to the Perception feature; like where even if their stat (or whatever) would not norally trigger the Perception key, a Rogue has a X% chance of triggering it. Maybe some type of Escape power that can be used to shake aggro briefly.

I fully agree on the need for the rogue to have more utility. I've written about his possible mechanical crafting ability (traps, etc) but some other utility could be thought of. Based on stealth, one can cansider lures, chloroform attack, and other tactical key mob sabotaging abilities. I would definitely like to see a class that is unique and using many utilities, instead of another warrior just fighting differently.

While I'm all for some variety of skills and specific utility for the rogue, the main question will be : How to make disarming traps an usefull and wanted benefit, withouth making it mandatory. It wouldn't be fair to need a rogue for specific content, as much as it wouldn't be to have theses skills rot because they are unwanted.

Hard to think to something better than "deal with more mobs" "unwanted control or damage" or "Shortcuts in dungeons" for the whole utility but not mandatory case of disarming traps and picking locks.

For picking locks, it's simple to me : some chests and doors will be locked. You can bash the door, but it makes noise and reveals you to mobs. Some doors will be pretty tough to destroy and picking might be a better option. As of chest picking, picking may prevent destroying the items inside like you would do if you exploded the treasure chest.

As of traps, well, i think some endgame traps are supposed to be deadly and hard to overcome on the brutal way, while some earlygame ones could be crossed using brute force. I think it's too easy to make disarming traps just an option on every situation, and it would make rogues partly useless. Only someone who doesn't want to consider class specificities and play casually would want that, which may be some people's point of view.

But i think avoiding a needed class and running dungeons no matter the team you're playing with should at least be pretty hard and doesn't go towards this current game's spirit as far as i saw, as the devs always emphasize the social aspect of this game. I would say the same answer for any other class specificity people would try to circumvent. Of course, this means you would indeed have trouble if you don't find a rogue at the right time. But i think that's just the point the devs are trying to make : this game is not meant to be any casual in matter of team making. All classes are supposed to be needed depending on the situation.

For picking locks, it's simple to me : some chests and doors will be locked. You can bash the door, but it makes noise and reveals you to mobs. Some doors will be pretty tough to destroy and picking might be a better option. As of chest picking, picking may prevent destroying the items inside like you would do if you exploded the treasure chest.

As of traps, well, i think some endgame traps are supposed to be deadly and hard to overcome on the brutal way, while some earlygame ones could be crossed using brute force. I think it's too easy to make disarming traps just an option on every situation, and it would make rogues partly useless. Only someone who doesn't want to consider class specificities and play casually would want that, which may be some people's point of view.

But i think avoiding a needed class and running dungeons no matter the team you're playing with should at least be pretty hard and doesn't go towards this current game's spirit as far as i saw, as the devs always emphasize the social aspect of this game. I would say the same answer for any other class specificity people would try to circumvent. Of course, this means you would indeed have trouble if you don't find a rogue at the right time. But i think that's just the point the devs are trying to make : this game is not meant to be any casual in matter of team making. All classes are supposed to be needed depending on the situation.

That's more complex than going against the will of the devs, if the rogue has a guaranteed spot in every group going dungeon, why are there more than 4 DPS for 4DPS slot. You don't need a specific tank or a specific healer to handle dungeons and grouping, why would you need a specific rogue ? Making things easier, maybe. But if they get mandatory because things are pretty undoable withouth them, then it should be the same for every single class, including tanks and healers. You would then end up with content that can only be done with a specific team of six, excluding every other class from this mix, because every class has a mandatory role that cannot be exclued.

I guess that's why they abandonned the trap finding/trap disarm in EQ, it ended being either mandatory, either useless, and in that case it was the least hurting. However rogue were great to bypass some keys quests or key farm, allowing teams to skip some parts if they were present.

To take upon a more fitting example : When you play tabletop and have no rogue, what do you do with traps ? You try to locate them, and not to trigger them because they are too complex to be disarmed by yourself, and if you cannot avoid them, you sent the more nimble or resilient character to trigger them withouth dying so the rest of the group can pass safely.

That's what I would expect with traps in Pantheon : Having them not disarmed would result in additionnal damage, annoying mechanics and impossible retreat in case of overwhelming situation, while requiring an additionnal awareness to move withouth triggering the fragile cables and sensors they are tied to.

Hmmm well maybe you are right that the need for trap disarming might be more of a unique need than the usual need of a tank or a healer, that several different classes can assume. Indeed a rogue shouldn't be more needed than a healer or a tank but i don't think this will be the case anyway.

On the contrary, one can say that in dungeons with no difficult traps, having a rogue might not even be a necessity at all as there will be plenty classes performing a dps role, which is the most common, where on the other side people will always need a tank and a healer whatever the traps are, and this for any situation, that a reduced amount of classes can assume, far less than dps roles. Even if there are several. I'm pretty sure most classes will be able to deal significant damage one way or another. Also, DPS role is tricky, you're just gaining time. Healing the party for example is a win/lose condition, whereas dealing damage rarely is one. If you heal your party and sustain damage good enough, you can win all the fights without a single DPS in your party. That's how things are in all the games i've played. And i have played lots. You can always play it slow. Only real reason to have a dps in the party is for easy runs, to gain time, or during time-based missions.

So letting the rogue have some time to shine with traps wouldn't be too much considering this. I also agree that some traps should be overcome by non rogue parties. Just not all of them, that would be too much. Otherwise, let's just remove traps and trap disarming from the game if it's really vanilla content. And i don't want that either personally. Any content that never ever needs the specialist to take care of it is vanilla to me. What would even be the point of it.

Also, i would like to see situations where specific healer classes or tanks would be required. It goes the same way for other classes too. I think the problem is more that you consider healers and tanks as non unique classes, and less about the fact that the rogue could be unique itself. If all classes would be required one way or the other, rogue, healer, tank, etc, wouldn't you be happy about it ? Better have all classes being unique than the whole contrary.

I will agree on some points, but will formerly disagree on others : People have been valuating DPS, especially thoses last years, as the most important thing in teamplay. Because DPS doesn't only make fights fasters, but that also means the duration of fight reduce and the whole party can invest less in sustained statistics or feats, needing less mana for healing or spending more mana adding more DPS to compensate. A reduced frame of fight implies less chances to encounter a bad situation or an individual error that would have crippled the whole party.

DPS is used to be considered as sub-par players that you can replace by each other only because they are numerous and the main choice of most players, but in the end, they dictate how much you can chain, how fast you can kill, and how few errors your group will make during a long and tedious fight.

Slow mode is only something you can consider in easy/mediums fights, in hard ones, someone will eventually make and error the group will not be able to afford and it will end badly.

I prefer to trust the developpers into how meaningfull and balanced thoses tools could/would be, but if traps are meant to be something you want to disarm and entice a party slot just for them, they better give some other classes the ability to either disarm, or freeze traps for a while.

Sure you can win many or maybe even most fights without a single "DPS" class but at great cost to efficiency and likely only with very specific group compositions. They are designing this with the intent that individual mobs are hard and a real threat to full groups that are following the tank/healer/dps group comp, where things can go sour very fast if things like adds aren't managed very quickly or interrupts aren't minded.

...having a rogue might not even be a necessity at all as there will be plenty classes performing a dps role, which is the most common, where on the other side people will always need a tank and a healer...

While it is true that groups need a tank and a healer (most of the time I imagine), you are making an unfair argument. First is: You need a tank and healer but any specific one of the Dire Lord/Paladin/Warrior or Cleric/Shaman/Druid probably won't be a necessity (same as the Rogue for DPS), you can fill the slot with any and move on. Which then leads to the second issue: a group of six typically has one slot for tank and one slot for healer but DPS tend to hold the other four spots which entails a much higher chance of a DPS leaving a group making a spot for another DPS.

I don't think it's so black and white; classes don't need to be specifically required for any content to be unique in gameplay or abilities. In fact I'd say having specific classes be required for certain content would hurt the game. It might be fine if the game was focused toward raiding in the end but while this game will have raiding the main challenging content at max level is said to be group based, which means it would be a huge mistake to require certain classes for any of the content as it would completely exclude similar classes from the content or at the very least create massive bottlenecks. So instead the classes can be unique in what they bring to the group and how they perform different functions so that it is better to have a mix of classes and no real incentive to double up on certain ones.

Which then leads to the second issue: a group of six typically has one slot for tank and one slot for healer but DPS tend to hold the other four spots

You make a point here. However in my gaming experience, 90% of players are DPS so that evens the score in terms of ratios.

I still don't give up on the classes uniqueness. I think each class should have its time to shine, and not simply resort to a role, even if that notion exists. When i play i want to feel like "hopefully i'm a shaman" and not "hopefully i'm a healer".

Which then leads to the second issue: a group of six typically has one slot for tank and one slot for healer but DPS tend to hold the other four spots

You make a point here. However in my gaming experience, 90% of players are DPS so that evens the score in terms of ratios.

I still don't give up on the classes uniqueness. I think each class should have its time to shine, and not simply resort to a role, even if that notion exists. When i play i want to feel like "hopefully i'm a shaman" and not "hopefully i'm a healer".

Cheers

That's really not how I perceive class flavour. Mine would be : "hopefully I know how to play my class" over "hopefully I picked that class."

You are just playing with words here, nothing more. I didn't contradict you here. Knowing how to use your class is player skill and experience, playing a specific class is a player's choice, that several factors can influence, like experience or skill too. Pleasure may come from both, but enjoying a class for what it represents is also interesting, players are not only pure technicians of their class. I'm pretty sure most players play a class because they have the most fun with it, imagining they are somewhat the hero they play with, where feeling like you're being good at playing with it comes later. It's not contradictory. Also it was a matter of saying comparing classes with their corresponding role, i wasn't saying that i'm already satisfied at the character selection screen.

But to answer you i must say i also don't run after the pride of being a "pro player" of my class, being among the best in whatever technical criteria there is. Else i'd be talking right now in a competitive pvp game forum boasting my k:d ratio, accuracy, rank etc. , not a cooperative pve game like Pantheon revolving around social interaction. I don't think it's the right game to prove yourself, it's a social game. But well everyone's free of course.

I'm not argueing against you, I'm just adding that I don't want to be recognized because I picked a specific class that is mandatory whatever my level would be, simply because one or numerous dungeons are designed to be undoable withouth the specific class.

I understand you feel cornered because your opinions are criticized, but we are simply here to talk about futures classes. If you have the right to stand to your opinion, that also means other people might stand different opinions, or against yours.

You're the first to say that Pantheon is a cooperative game, but shall it force players to afford a rogue over any other player in some scenarios ? Is cooperation a synergy of people playing and organizing together, or a bunk of walls you need a specific class to pass by, resulting failure if you try withouth them.

I'd stand to my point there : If content need more than specific roles and a basic alchemy of class diversity well executed together, is it rewarding or just tights checks punishing players for not choosing the right class ?

Is see more where you're going now. Well, i think the game should be social, challenging and realistic. I'll take a caricatural example to make it clear : 6 warriors hitting hard on the ground won't cast a spell, whatever the strengh they put in it.

So if in one situation you need to cast a specific spell to go further, you also need to socialize with a mage, not use some kind of teamwork with your full warrior team to finally cast that spell. It means you need a mage, where you don't have one in your party. I don't view that as punishing.

If you really want the game to be cooperative, you also need to make friends and not play with the same 5 players all over again untill you have seen everything and you stop playing 2 years later. That's typically the design of a non social game. You rather need to make friends all day, ask for help everywhere with people you don't know, find other people to party with, and not do everything with the same players all the time succesfully. It's much more interesting to play with all the playerbase than saying "no thank you, we're good" after you have found 5 people to play with. That's my view : needing a class makes people socialize. Specialization creates interaction, versatility reduces it. If your team can do everything on its own, then talking to others becomes optional. And that is to avoid.

You can also see that on a positive way : yet you will need new people, you will be yourself also required for other parties you are not used to play with. I'm pretty sure that's where the game is going and that's one of the reasons that got me interested in this game.

Note that people can also certainly reroll, which may make things quite easy.

Of course, teamplay inside the party should be important too. I'm just considering a broader point of view. Teamplay is not contradictory with socializing. You just can't do every miracle you need with teamplay alone.

...It means you need a mage, where you don't have one in your party. I don't view that as punishing.

If you really want the game to be cooperative, you also need to make friends and not play with the same 5 players all over again untill you have seen everything and you stop playing 2 years later. That's typically the design of a non social game. You rather need to make friends all day, ask for help everywhere with people you don't know, find other people to party with, and not do everything with the same players all the time succesfully. It's much more interesting to play with all the playerbase than saying "no thank you, we're good" after you have found 5 people to play with. That's my view : needing a class makes people socialize. Specialization creates interaction, versatility reduces it. If your team can do everything on its own, then talking to others becomes optional. And that is to avoid.

You can also see that on a positive way : yet you will need new people, you will be yourself also required for other parties you are not used to play with. I'm pretty sure that's where the game is going and that's one of the reasons that got me interested in this game.

Of course, teamplay inside the party should be important too. I'm just considering a broader point of view. Teamplay is not contradictory with socializing. You just can't do every miracle you need with teamplay alone.

It is actually punishing, though it's more that it is limiting. If you have a steady group of friends that you play with then you are screwed if one of you isn't the class and you have to break up for things they may want to do together. I don't agree with mechanics that force or heavily push players into playing a certain way (when it can be avoided) and forcing friends to not always be able to play together when they make the time to do so just to try and force them to play with others or socialize just seems like a poor decision. It is also limiting in terms of possible group compositions and avoiding bottlenecks in (as well as avoidance of) content when certain classes that are required are of low population on a server.

Those people who only or mostly just group within their own circle are completely fine. As you say at the end, teamplay doesn't mean they aren't social, they are often still engaged with the community in other ways be it in a larger guild, the economy, local chat, or on an alt.

As for "yet you will need new people, you will be yourself also required for other parties you are not used to play with. I'm pretty sure that's where the game is going and that's one of the reasons that got me interested in this game." I would say it's certainly possible that is the case but it seems to me more that the opposite is true based on the FAQ, specifically # 1.5:

There will be an entire system of features and mechanics to help people find new friends and others to group with -- there is no one special solution to such a challenge -- it must be a priority and addressed from many angles.

Some quick and easy examples, of course, would be to reward people who don't know each other to group together, to help them stay in contact, to allow to share personal information if they want, to allow searching for new friends if that person chooses to participate in matchmaking. The main point is that we'll be doing all sorts of things to proactively bring people together and KEEP them together.

This is the opposite of something like a dungeon finder that randomly brings in people you need to do an instance, you then do the instance without speaking a word and once the instance is over the group disperses. This is what damages communities and prevents true social interaction.

I'd say it seems like they WANT people to find their own groups of friends within the game or otherwise to play with and enjoy the game with, they want players to stay together and share experiences together over time. It's those players who find groups/guilds/friends and continuously play with those people that tend to stay and keep playing the game for years, that keep getting the same enjoyment. So they want to help those that don't have a steady group of friends to find a good group and those that have a few friends and need more to fill out their static to find those players.

Gideon said:

I still don't give up on the classes uniqueness. I think each class should have its time to shine, and not simply resort to a role, even if that notion exists. When i play i want to feel like "hopefully i'm a shaman" and not "hopefully i'm a healer".

Each class would have its time to shine with their own uniqueness without having to be a required class for specific content anyway though. Making a rogue needed in a spot just to have a forced time to shine wouldn't make me feel unique or special at all personally. I'd rather it be a group sees me as a rogue and based on the composition of classes already in their group they find I would be the perfect DPS to shore up any weaknesses they have as a group compared to another DPS "Oh sweet a rogue, his X will work great with our monk's ___! Let's pick him" or "A druid would be great for us, his environmental & weather/climate spells will synergize well with our wizard and we already have an enchanter for slows/haste, let's get him over the shaman or cleric."

I am all for utility abilities for the rogue. Spot trap, disarm trap, open lock, climb wall, safe fall (take less falling damage), hide in shadows, move silently, spot secret door... I would even be willing to take a hit in the dps department for such utility options.

A rogue should be desired for his utility within dungeons. This does not have to mean their absolutely necessary. Wizards could have knock spells to open locks. Enchanters might have a spell detect trap (which shows what type of trap your dealing with. You may not be able to disarm a trap without a rogue but you could certainly buff whoever is going to bash open that trapped locked chest against whatever the trap may be. A druid might have a spell detect secret paths. Rangers might be able to detect traps in natural environments. Even races may have some utility such as a dwarf being able to detect trapfalls or traps in stone work, Elves may have a chance to spot a secret doors.

Their is no reason a Blacksmith at some point might not learn locksmithing. which could open locks for a group.

The key is to have a rogues utility desireable however a group without one could do just fine with a mix of classes and perhaps even races within it.

obviously if the rogue has the most desirable utility its dps may not be as high as other dps classes with less utility.

I agree that rogues should have less dps if they have high utility. That's where i would like it to go. But instead of a reduced overall average damage, i'd rather see their dps being dependent on the situation : sneak attacks that don't always work (fighting undead for example), traps with limited supply (ie carried in inventory), poisons that don't always work and in limited supply, creatures that detect stealth better than others, etc. So that the rogue has a time to rely on others or switch strategies, and another time to perform at his/her best.

At a second thought, why not give some rogue-like utility spells to other classes. As long as each other class can't contain every rogue skill by itself but just a few of them, or with different mechanics. As long as it doesn't make the game too casual, like lockpicking with a warrior, performing sneak attacks with an enchanter, etc. There should at least be some logic behind it.

On the other side, if other classes get spells making them perform like rogues, what spells does the rogue get in return ? Indeed, there are plenty of useful spells a mage can cast that the rogue can't, so what is he getting ? That was rhetorical. Just saying that class balancing is a two-way action. So if you want the rogue to have nothing special at all, then other classes shouldn't either. But i kind of regret that point of view you have, because i think it makes the game too casual, like choosing anything always works. I personnally want some difficulty in the game, and there is not only the combat difficulty that everyone thinks about. There could be skill checks, secrets, etc. Any class specificity is part of it to me. I'm pretty sure i won't play the game if i feel like everything is easy. Doing anything with any class wouldn't make this game any different than most nowadays mmos then.

Then you can add the Use Magic Device to the rogue arsenal, as it's been done in most D&D video games. It allows the rogue to perform a skill check, and if he succeeds, he can use a scroll, a wand, or any other trinket normally reserved to different mage classes. I've actually had some fun with that one.

Having played ONLY Rogues (even my alts were Rogues), and admittedly, only in EQ, EQ23, and Vanguard, I can say that I always played my Rogue as a DPS *AND* a scout.

I have literally, taken weeks at a time off of level grinding to explore areas and expand my knowledge of areas. I would take notes of the /loc coordinates of interesting areas and places that might be fun for adventuring and/or levelling up. Did I die lots, doing this solo; especially at lower levels? Yep. You bet your ass I did. But it taught me valiable skills, such as how to path around mobs so as not to get detected. To remember the mist direct path to the zone line in case I got into trouble and had to make a run for it. To be able to take the shortest paths back and forth for corpse runs...

I have alsways played my Rogue closer to something like a Scout/Assassin.

My Rogue in EQ had the motto, "I am a Rogue. I will come out of the shadows, and I will kill you. I am the thing that goes bump in the night."